Stan Van Gundy, the new president and head coach of the Detroit Pistons, thinks the club can get a serviceable player with their only pick in tonight's NBA draft.

The Pistons have the 38th selection after sending their first-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets as part of the trade that brought Corey Maggette to Detroit two years ago.

While Van Gundy said the Pistons are unlikely to make a trade in order to move up, he admitted it's possible if there's a player still available late in the first round that they think will help them.

And ESPN analyst Tom Penn, a former assistant general manager with the Portland Trail Blazers and Memphis Grizzlies, thinks they should indeed try and move up although he admits it's not going to be easy.

"I think they're going to get a good player at 38," Penn said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. "So plan A is to just sit there and see who falls."

But that doesn't mean they can't at least try and swing a deal to move up.

"They have cap space starting next year, and this is Stan Van Gundy's first chance," Penn said. "Obviously, it was a crusher when eight went away. Talk about bad luck, but to have the eighth pick just disappear like that because of the way the lottery balls fell was a crusher.

"So, yes, they should try to aggressively move up. However, it's really hard to do. It's really hard to get up using 38 as an asset. They'd have to – usually the cost of doing business there is a future first-round pick if you're going to get into the first round, and I don't think the Pistons can afford to do that kind of thing.

"The other way you can move up is to take a contract off of someone's roster into your cap space. So they can do that. However, in a vacuum, it's just hard to see something like that happening based on what I do know about the situation."

This year marks the first time since 2006 the Pistons haven't had a first-round draft pick.

ESPN will broadcast the draft from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn beginning at 7 p.m.